Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(34)

Griffoni paused and took another sip of water. Into her silence, Alaimo asked, ‘What is it you’d like to know about them, Dottoressa?’

Griffoni replaced her glass on the table and said, ‘Neither of them has ever been reported or arrested. Well, Vio for speeding in his boat, but he’s young and he’s Venetian, so I think we can dismiss that.’

Alaimo smiled again and raised his hands, as if to suggest that boys would be boys.

‘In our files at the Questura, we have nothing on them,’ she said, then added, as though it made some sort of difference, ‘And they did take the young women to the hospital.’ Then, casually, she added, ‘So, before we leap to conclusions about them, I’d like to know . . .’ here, she turned to Alaimo and gave a warm smile, ‘if you’ve ever had any trouble with either one of them,’ and then she added, ‘or with the uncle.’

Alaimo sat back, folded his hands, and after a moment said, ‘I certainly know the name Vio.’ He paused in thought for a moment and then said, ‘But the other one – Duso – I’ve never heard the name.’

Griffoni smiled and nodded; Brunetti did the same.

‘What I can do,’ Alaimo said amiably, ‘is see what I can find out here, if any of the men have had dealings . . .’ here Alaimo paused and added, ‘. . . or trouble.’

He looked from one to the other and said, ‘Can this wait a few days? That will give me a chance to see what the people here in the office know, if anything. Would that be all right?’

Brunetti nodded; Griffoni smiled.

The three of them got to their feet simultaneously. Alaimo accompanied them to the door of his office and shook hands, formally with Brunetti, in a more friendly manner with Griffoni, and bade them farewell.

‘Orsato,’ the Captain called, and the man sitting in front of the Laguna Nord got quickly to his feet. ‘Sì, Capitano,’ he said, although he did not salute.

‘Would you take the Commissari downstairs?’

‘Of course, Capitano,’ the man answered with a bow.

The cadet accompanied them downstairs to the door to the riva, then opened it for them. Outside, the panorama of the Giudecca had been waiting.

Brunetti turned to the left and started towards the embarcadero, where they could get the Number Two.

After only a few steps, he slowed to a stop and turned towards Griffoni to ask, ‘What was all that about?’

‘He’s a liar and not to be trusted,’ she snapped, again speaking like an Italian and not a Neapolitan.

‘What?’ Brunetti asked, having judged Griffoni’s behaviour, as, at the least, strange.

‘For the last twelve years, the Abbess of the Chiostro di San Gregorio Armeno has been a Filippina, Suora Crocifissa Ocampo, and thus is unlikely to be his aunt, as he claims.’

It took Brunetti a moment to react. ‘I’m not sure that’s enough to mean he’s not to be trusted,’ he said. ‘He could simply have been boasting.’

‘Then why did he calm down when I revealed my full stupid, vulgar self to him?’ Before Brunetti could comment, she added, ‘And calm down even more when I made it clear we had no real interest in Vio?’

Brunetti continued walking, replaying the scene in his memory. Indeed, Alaimo had seemed far more comfortable with the Griffoni who had slipped free from her professional restraint and had revealed the triviality of her own concerns. Anyone exposed to the woman who acted and spoke as she had would hardly consider her a person serious in the pursuit of justice. Or a threat.

The pleasantries about Naples, the folklore of the volcano, the diversion of their conversation into banalities: all had seemed to please the Captain. But it made no sense.





13


On the way back to the Zattere stop, Brunetti, walking beside a now-silent Griffoni, thought about Capitano Alaimo. Brunetti conceded to him the charm common to most Neapolitans, whose society and culture, having suffered invasion from countless sources for more than two millennia, had learned the art of the friendly manner and welcoming smile. They’d smiled at the Greeks, the Romans, even the Ostrogoths, which is to make no mention of the Byzantines and the Normans, the Angevins and the Spaniards, all the way up to the Germans and the Allies. They’d tried to fight them off, bargained, bribed, surrendered, and finally admitted the victors through their gates. Centuries of this created the strategy of survival: amiability, flattery, joviality, deceit. Where are to be found the Greeks, the Ostrogoths? The towering walls of Byzantium? But the Neapolitans? Are they not still at home, and are they not still charming?

Brunetti pulled his mind away from these reflections. It was too easy to read history as you pleased, see what you chose to see in the actions of people and cultures long gone.

‘Excuse me?’ he said when Griffoni stopped walking and put her hand on his arm.

‘I don’t know where your thoughts are, Guido, but they’re not here.’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I was thinking about Naples.’

She failed to conceal her surprise. ‘What, specifically?’

‘How you’ve survived invasion, occupation, war, destruction: things like that,’ he answered, managing to make it sound normal.

She grinned. ‘You’ve forgotten sitting beside an active volcano that can go off any time it wants. And that when that happens, there will be more than three million people trying to escape.’